Design Trust for Public Space‘s urban farming project, Five Borough Farm, is now calling on farmers to help gather data for the upcoming growing season. The effort hopes to actualize and solidify the volume and impact that New York City’s farms and gardens have on our food systems.
Few New Yorkers know how green their neighborhoods really are, or at least could be. With approximately seven hundred farms or gardens and counting in the five buroughs, the city is a leader in urban agriculture. Still, the challenges of calculating how much food is actually produced, what seeds are sown, and where then the harvest ends up are colossal tasks for the often volunteer-run farms.
The Design Trust is offering a $200 stipend for participation in the growing, season-long study. Participants will be asked to attend a one-time workshop to develop tools and methods for data collection, collect data at their farm, and hold bi-weekly, in-person or telephone check-ins. By the end, participants will have access to the data they and their peers collected. This all in an effort to help these farmers tell their story, and to encourage further investment in the city’s growing urban farming movement.
Photo: Five Borough Farm